THE idea of moving Six Nations rugby to a Friday night is only slightly more rational than asking a fish to ride a bicycle.

THE idea of moving Six Nations rugby to a Friday night is only slightly more rational than asking a fish to ride a bicycle.

This would be much more than tinkering with time slots and shifting schedules. Many in Wales and elsewhere would recoil in dismay at a venal act of cultural destruction.

Rugby fans are a flexible network of communities. Beloved stadia are routinely demolished to make way for ever more glorious arenas, so opposition to Friday night rugby is not the whingeing of Luddites.

Instead, the cries of protest are exclamations at alarm from men and women who do not want to see one of the sporting world's greatest institutions arbitrarily dynamited.

This Six Nations has proven that rugby still has the power to make entire days pulse with joy, excitement and drama.

Rugby is not something which is watched on a television screens by exhausted viewers at the end of a working week; such moments should be filled with the passive delights of Friends or Later... With Jools Holland. A rugby match is something you crawl out of bed to travel to watch, either in a stadium or with fellow members of your tribe.

Somehow, match days have succeeded in retaining the exhilaration of a religious pilgrimage and a village fair. As the lack of arrests demonstrate, rugby is responsible for the friendliest and fastest people movements in our modern world. Such a glorious and precious social phenomenon - which brings wealth to cities and fun to families - should not be sacrificed to the gods of television.

Sunday games are hard enough to travel to. For most people, Friday night matches will be impossible.

Anyone who loves this game should resist it being broken for a shameless financial fix.